30 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN tile. And the whole picture is bathed in a special form of patriotic sentimentality: scenes are held so that we cannot fail to ap- preciate the beauty of the American past. With John Wayne, Ward Bond, Anna Lee, Victor McLaglen, Pedro Armendariz, Mae Marsh, Irene Rich, and George O'Brien. (Regency; Oct. 19-20.) GLORIA-With Gena Rowlands, John Adames, and Buck Henry; directed by John Cas- savetes. (CInema I.) THE GREAT SANTINI (called "The Ace" on Home Box Office)- This slice-of-family-life melo- drama features Robert Duvall in the Bruce Dern role (the military-psychopath father) and Michael O'Keefe in the RIchard Thomas role (the sensitive, thoughtful teen-age son). Adapted from Pat Conroy's autobiographical novel "The Great Santini," the movie is set in 1962 in Beaufort, South Carolina, where Conroy grew up, but (as written for the screen and directed by Lewis John Carlino) it takes place in the TV land of predictabili- ty-the plain of dowdy realism where a boy finds his manhood by developing the courage to stick to his principles and stand up to his father. With Blythe Danner, who comes close to creating a believable woman out of an idealized mother figure, and brings in shad- ings that help to suggest a real family, though she doesn't have a single scene that is really hers. Also with Lisa Jane Persky as the family comic, Theresa Merritt as the house- keeper, DavId Keefe as a redneck, and Paul Mantee. (9/1/80) (Greenwich Playhouse 1, Guild, and Embassy 72nd St.) HOPSCOTCH-With Walter Matthau, Glenda Jackson, and Ned Beatty; directed by Ronald Neame (Loews New York 1, and Loews State 2; through Oct. 23.) LOVE You, ALICE B. TOkLAS! (1968)-A giddy, slapdash, entertainingly inconsequential com- edy, written by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker, and starring Peter Sellers as a Los Angeles Jewish lawyer who turns hippie With Joyce Van Patten as his anxious fiancée, and Leigh Taylor-Young, J 0 Van Fleet, David Arkin, Herbert Edelman, Salem Lud- wig, Edra Gale, Lou Gottlieb, and Grady Sutton. The picture makes you laugh surpris- ingly often Directed by Hy Averback (Cin- ema Village; Oct. 21.) THE IN-LAWS (1979)-Ao inspired collaboration between Alan Arkin and Peter Falk as the fathers of a prospective suburban bride and groom. Arkin is a moderately amiable dentist who gets tangled up in the machinations of a supposed C.I.A. agent, played by Falk. Plots are discussed over the heads of helpless den- tal patients, dinner-table talk concerns tsetse flies the size of eagles, and a wild cab ride through Herald Square ultimately leads to a Latin-American country where the dictator pours coffee into a mouth painted on his hand Script by Andrew Bergman; directed by Arthur Hiller. (7/2/79) (Olympia; through Oct. 16.) has My TURN-With Jill Clayburgh Michael Douglas. and Charles Grodin; directed by Claudia Weill. (Loews New York 1, and Loews State 1; starting Oct. 24.) KAGEMUSHA THE SHADOW WARRIOR-With Tatsuya Nakadai, directed by Akira Kurosawa IT} Japanese (Plaza.) LOULOU- With Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu, directed by Maurice Pialat. In French. (Cinema Studio 2.) LOVING COUPLES-With Shirley MacLaine, James Coburn, Susan Sarandon, Sally Kellerman, and Stephen Collins, directed by Jack Smight. (Gramercy, Cinema II, Loews Orpheum 2, Paramount, and Embassy; starting Oct. 24.) THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN (1970)- The Terry South- ern novel, in a slovenly version, directed by Joseph McGrath, that never quite seems on target. There are funny moments, but they don't add up to enough. With Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, Laurence Harvey, Spike Mil- ligan, Raquel Welch, Leonard Frey, and Christopher Lee. (Cinema Village; Oct. 21 ) THE MAN I LOVE (1947)-Of its kind, not bad at all Warner Brothers, combining two genres in the hope of snaring a double audience, put together several of these musical melo- dramas, and this one, directed by Raoul Walsh, is one of the smoothest. Ida Lupino starred with Bruce Bennett as a jazz mu- sician (one of his few good roles), Robert AIda, and Andrea King The score includes a S-M-T-W-T-F-S I I 1 15 1 16 1 17 1 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 whole raft of classics-"The Man I Love" of course, and "Body and Soul," "BIll," "Liza," "Why Was I Born?," "If I Could Be wIth You One Hour Tonight." (Carnegie Hall Cinema, Oct 24.) THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976)-Nicolas Roeg directs a rather chilly, beautifully com- posed sci-fi picture about a cat-eyed man (David Bowie) who comes to earth from another planet in search of water for his drought-ridden world. Rip Torn is good as a burned-out professor of chemistry. (Cinema 3.) MEATBALLS (1979)-A summer-camp burlesque, tailgating "Animal House." Bill Murray, an ebullient but underripe - comedian, plays the counsellor-in-chief. (7/16/79) (St. Marks Cinema; through Oct. 16.) MELVIN AND HOWARD-This lyrical comedy, di- rected by Jonathan Demme, from a script by Bo Goldman, is an almost flawless act of sym- pathetic imagination. Demme and Goldman have entered into the soul of American blue- collar suckerdom; they have taken for their hero a chucklehead who is hooked on TV game shows, and they have made us under- stand how it was that when something big- something legendary-touched his life, no- body could believe it. Paul Le Mat plays big, beefy Melvin Dummar, a sometime milkman, sometime worker at a magnesium plant, sometime gas-station operator, and hopeful songwriter-the representatIve debt-ridden American for whom game shows were created. Jason Robards plays Howard Hughes, who is lying in the freezing desert at night when Melvin spots him-a pile of rags and bones, with a dirty beard and straggly long gray hair. Melvin, thinking him a desert rat, helps him into his pickup truck but is bothered by his mean expression, in order to cheer him up (and give himself some company), he insists that the old geezer sing with him or get out and walk. When Robard's Howard Hughes responds to Melvin's amiable prodding and begins to enjoy himself on a simple level and sings "Bye, Bye, Blackbird," it's a great mo- ment Hughes' eyes are an old man's eyes- faded into the past, shiny and glazed by rec- ollections-yet intense. You feel that his grungy paranoia has melted away, that he has been healed. WIth Mary Steenburgen, who has a pearly aura as Melvin's go-go- dancer wife, Lynda; Pamela Reed as Melvin's down-to-earth second wife; Elizabeth Che- shire as the child Darcy; Jack Kehoe as the dairy foreman; and the real Melvin Dummar as the lunch counterman at the Reno bus depot. This picture has the same beautiful dippy warmth as its characters; it's what might have happened if Jean Renoir had di- rected a comedy script by Preston Sturges. Cinema tography by Tak Fujimoto (10/13/80) (Beekman; starting Oct. 17 ) MIDDLE AGE CRAZy-With Bruce Dern and Ann- Margret, directed by John Trent. (Eastside Cinema, and Loews Orpheum 2; Oct. 17- 23. . . . <<II Quad Cinema, and Embassy; start- ing Oct. 17.) MOTEL HELL-With Rory Calhoun directed by . I i I: D I , i I' ! fin [1(1 /117 n'1 Ull _ .' r(fTI1I! I t{ ; ..,. ', . .' 'or " : ; yØOOUDu . I,I --- a ì .. - of . .. :.. I :..;"1f ' _. <."' J . 'I l(#' " "" Kevin Connor. (Eastside Cinema, and Em- bassy 5; starting Oct. 24.) My BODYGUARD-With Chris Makepeace, Ruth Gordon, Matt DIllon, John Houseman, and Martin Mull, directed by Tony Bill (Man- hattan 2; through Oct. 16.) My BRILLIANT CAREER-This stong, consistently rewardIng Australian film about the coming of age of a spirited, overintelligent young woman living on a New South Wales cattle station at the turn of the century looks and feels and moves along like a first-class old- fashioned novel, which isn't surprising, since it closely follows an autobiographical tale by a celebrated Down Under bluestocking named Miles Franklin. The heroine, Sybylla Melvyn, is beautifully played by the resourceful and striking Judy Davis. The director, Gillian Armstrong, never permits this small, piercing story to appear more impassioned or contem- porary than one wants it to be With Sam Neill, Pat Kennedy, Peter Whitford, Wendy Hughes, and Aileen Brittain. (2/4/80) (72nd Street East; starting Oct. 24.) THE NUDE BOMB-Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Secret Agent 86. Directed by Clive Donner. (Olympia; Oct. 17-23.) OH, GOD! BOOk II-With George Burns, Suzanne Pleshette, and David Birney; directed by Gil- bert Cates. (Beekman, Loews 83rd Quad, and R.K.O. Cinerama 2; through Oct. 16.... f]] Murray Hill; through Oct. 23.) ONE-TRICk PONy-With Paul Simon, Blair Brown, Rip Torn, Joan Hackett, and Allen Goorwitz; directed by Robert M Young. (Gemini 2.) ORDINARY PEOPLE-Autumn leaves and wintry emotions This is an academic exercise in cartharsis; it's earnest, it means to improve people, and it lasts a lifetime. The story is about the Jarretts-Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, and their son, Timothy Hutton-a Protestant family living in an im- posing brick house in a wealthy suburb of Chicago. There is so little communication in tl).is uptight family that the three Jarretts sit in virtual silence at the perfectly set dinner table in the perfectly boring big dining room. From time to time, the father, with a nervous tic of a smile, tries to make contact with his son and urges him to see the psychiatrist recommended by the hospital where he was treated after a recent suicide attempt. The movie is about the harm that repression can do, but the movie is just as repressive and sanitized as the way of life it means to expose, and it backs away from anything messier than standard TV-style psychiatric explana- tions Making his début as a film director, Robert Redford shows talent with the actors, the younger ones especially; Alvin Sargent's adaptation of the popular Judith Guest novel is heavy on psychobabble. The joker about this movie is that the audience weeps for the unloving Wasp-witch mother, who cares only for appearances and who can't change be- cause of the pride and the privacy she was trained in, she seems the gallant last stan- dard-bearer for the Wasp family epic, and the picture somehow turns into a nosegay for Wasp repression. With Judd Hirsch as the idealized warm, friendly Jewish psychiatrist, Elizabeth McGovern as the son's girl friend, and Meg Mundy as the grandmother. (10/13/80) (Loews Tower East, and Loews Astor Plaza.) PHANTASM (1979)- With Michael Baldwin, di- rected by Don Coscarelli. (R.K.O. 86th St , and National; through Oct. 16.) PRIVATE BENJAMIN-With Goldie Hawn, Eileen Brennan, Armand Assante, and Robert Web- ber; directed by Howard Zieff (Sutton, R.K.O 86th St., and Movieland.) PRIVATE LIVES (1931)-Early talkie attempt at glittering theatrical sophistication, and, some- how, M-G-M brought it off This version of the Noel Coward play was made soon after the play came out, and perhaps the play's style and excitement carries the cast along. Norma Shearer isn't so bad, and Robert Montgomery is very, very good. It was a daz- zling success. Sidney Franklin directed; with Reginald Denny. (Theatre 80 St Marks; Oct 19 ) RED-HEADED WOMAN (1932)-Jean Harlow as a girl who exploits her charms and makes the journey from the wrong side of the tracks to a rich marriage, and then to even richer liai- sons She's a throttler, a scrambler, a kicker-